1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to protection of user data in hosted application environments.
2. Discussion of Related Art
A multitude of services and applications are presently hosted on a third party infrastructure (e.g., in the cloud). For example, an individual can use a client program on their local computer (e.g., a personal computer, tablet, smartphone, etc.) to interact with a hosted application to edit and store their personal documents. However, it can be difficult to ensure the privacy of this data since many entities may have access to underlying components of the hosted application. The user of the hosted application has to make a trust determination about the application developer and the hosting provider. However, it can be difficult to make these determinations since the information needed to make a proper assessment may be unavailable.
Currently, hosted applications are monolithically installed in the hosting infrastructure. While this can successfully isolate the applications from one another, it provides virtually no control over the communication between applications or communication with external entities. As a result, once applications have access to a user's private data, they are free to share this information with anyone. The primary reason for third-party hosting, to hide the complexity of managing and scaling computational resources, also serves to hide the structure of any hosted application or service. Thus, a user who would need to review the internals of both the hosting infrastructure and the application of interest to determine their combined trustworthiness is left in the dark. However, if the hosting infrastructure and applications can be fortified, it is not necessary for the user to make these trust determinations.
Accordingly, there is a need for methods and systems that can better protect user data in hosted application environments.